#drama courese

[gzteacher]

Overworked [TL;DR]

[TL;DR Version]: Finally worked up the courage to tell my supervisor that my workload was too much. We’ll see if anything can be worked out. I’m all-or-nothing at this point.

[Full Version - it’s very very very long]

I’m at a school that’s only been around for going on two years now, and most teachers teach 1 to 3 courses distributed through 12 to 14 classes per week.

And then there’s MY schedule...

I teach 8 courese; 18 classes a week.  - Grade 7 Reading Essentials: For kids who can’t read at all, as in this is class were we learn how to sound out words, break down compound words, recognize prefixes and suffixes, and course read material designed for American 8~9 year olds. I’m not mentioning this to be facetious but to be informative. The school originally wanted me to teacher them AP Literature. Yeah. A bunch of 12year-old non-native English speaking, never-been-immersed-in-WesternEuropean-culture 12 year olds suddenly analyzing the structure and language of Maupassant’s The Necklace. Anyway.

- Grade 9 Intro to Literature: I’ll explain why there’s no Grade 8 here later. If you’re up for a long ass read, of course) Intro to Literature (This is of course, after they’ve learned how to do basic comprehension. This course works on recognizing figures of speech and rhetorical devices, plus it looks at easy-to-read works - yes they exist... it took some digging, but indeed they exist - placed against historical, cultural and thematic backgrounds

- Grade 8+9 IGCSE English Language A: I asked my British friends about this and they all agree that Grade 8+9 (age 13~14) is way too young to be signing up for Pearson Edexcel IGCSE especially with them speaking a language that has very little if any similarity to English, unless the students have lived extensively in a Western country, which these students have not.

- Grade 10 ALevel Literature: I only have this class once a week yet am expected to prepare them for ALevel Lit. This once-a-week class versus their more prominent ALevel Chemistry and Physics. *sigh*

- Grade 10 PreAP Literature and Composition: Only because this is my first year teaching and these student’s have no background with literature. It’s basically a faster moving Grade 9 course, but it focuses on FRQ section of the exam wherein you have to have read an actual novel. Novels in this class are actually just short stories in which I have to make vocabulary lists of because the students won’t make it through a page unless they translate every other word.

- Grade 11 AP Literature and Composition: I actually managed to talk the students OUT of signing up for this exam unless they’ve really enjoy reading and can think and question things as they read. Their TOEFL Reading classes do a great job of teaching them reading comprehension. Unfortunately, AP Lit does not test your ability to search for answers directly within text, so that’s where this class comes in. The learning curve been Grade 10 and 11 here is such that the stories and poems we look at in Grade 10 are too easy for Grade 11 and the Grade 11 works are often too difficult for Grade 10. There is very little, if any, overlap.

- Grade 11 AP Psychology: One 3 hour course every Monday afternoon. It’s a nightmare especially considering how the worksheets assigned throughout the week to help them review things more often then not don’t get done. The extra materials, video links, online notes, cheat sheets, etc go ignored because apparently the stuff only makes sense when I’m standing in front of them modelling everything for them. The school expects all the students to take the exam and for me to analyze their scores once CollegeBoard releases them.

- Drama: We meet once a week, assuming students haven’t been pulled out to do tutoring sessions for Calculus. The school expects a drama performance at the end of the term.

It was becoming more and more difficult to manage these classes until I finally realized I was burning out. (I’m terrible at recognizing burnout.) The moment I would shift my attention to one course, the performance of another course would suffer. Students from whatever class would complain that they aren’t “doing enough” or that they haven’t gotten their homework or exams back yet. (There’s still a large pile of ungraded papers on my desk as we speak... I could be grading them, but yeah. That.)

Now.

Originally, this list was all just “AP Literature, plus IGCSE, Psychology and Drama” with addition to U.S. and World History. After some arguing, I managed to get the history courese removed from my schedule as well as Grade 8 “Literature” (the classes that I didn’t want ended up begin given to the teacher the school was planning of firing BECAUSE the principal - who knows me from a previous school - found out I would be teaching there).

I did try teaching every Literature class the exact same way to save time, printing, planning, etc. I knew it would be challenging, but it was either they double up and put forth the effort to master difficult material, or I split myself into multiple parts and water Western Lit down into something approachable and digestible. They all started out with recognizing the basic forms of Literature: peotry, prose and drama. Yes, I made a worksheet to let them practice identifying which description fit which type of literature, just to make sure they were following me because you can never know when the students are dead silent before, during and after classes.

Then we moved on to Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson - easy reads with a couple vocabularly cheat sheets and translation references. Then the struggling happened and as predicted, the lower the grade, the more the struggle. I decided then to re-up the entire “Literature” course and instead create a course that was appropriate for the students’ level.

I will say the one good thing that comes out of the being the only teacher who has to see EVERY. SINGLE. STUDENT through the span of a week is that as a significantly unique-looking FOREIGNER from a particularly diverse cultural background, generally socially aware, and is fluent in Chinese, it has become useful in whipping these kids in to shape in terms of their cultural awareness and mannerisms. If you’re a foreigner in China worried about local kids picking at you, making snarky remarks around you, flat out insulting you in Chinese or just being “weird” around you, you won’t have to worry about that at all with these kids. The principal knows that, I’m sure this was one of the reasons she brought me around. The school is one of those internationalized jawns where the students get offers from Western universities come their Grade11/Grade12 year. It helps to not end up overseas still making dumb comments about someone’s nose and then looking crazy when they call you out on it. Go figure.

The school is mad shy with admitting they have me teacher 8 courses. They won’t admit it right away because in their minds, I teach “Literature, Psychology, and Drama... 3 courses” but then they wonder how I manage to go through so many copies, and they pretend they don’t notice the eight stacks of exam papers that all have my name on them during midterms and finals. It’s contract renewal time, and I basically told the powers that be that they either need to pay extra, hire more staff to distribute these courses more sensibly or it’s boots for me. I’m losing hair and self-care time being the only one at this school who would need 3 or 4 people to replace me should I leave.